Darren Breen | The Grand Rapids PressRussell Vane is escorted into his preliminary court hearing at the Kent County Courthouse Tuesday. Vane is implicated in two cold-case murder cases.

GRAND RAPIDS -- Forensic pathologist David Start was not around to perform the 1976 autopsy of Kathleen Darling or the 1979 autopsy of Diane Holloway.

But using the reports filed more than 30 years ago by those who did perform the autopsies -- both have since died, Start was able to confirm that both women had been sexually assaulted and killed by ligature strangulation and that both young women were pregnant at the time of their deaths.

Much of today's preliminary hearing for Russell Vane in the cold cases was taken with the methodical presentation of events from March 19, 1976, by Assistant Kent County Prosecutor Kellee Koncki when 17-year-old mother Darling was found dead in her Michigan Street NE apartment.

This was just hours after Vane and a group of teenage friends of her imprisoned husband Michael Darling chased a naked man out of her apartment.

Vane, now 58, is charged with murder in Darling's death and with the Aug. 25, 1979, slaying of postal clerk Holloway.

The body of Holloway, 21, was found hidden under discarded pallets near Lexington Avenue SW and Fulton Street within feet of where Vane earlier said he had witnessed a rape.

It was the naked young man, still in his teens according to testimony, found in the apartment of Darling, who later called Grand Rapids Police and led them to her bloody body.

Testimony will continue on Thursday and will include more information on Holloway's slaying.

Koncki did call a retired social worker from the former Kent Oaks who said, in 1972, Vane told her that he was having forcible sex with women.

Also, Vane's step-sister testified Vane had molested her and on several occasions tried to tear her clothes off when she was a teen.